Signs of Chemical Attack Detailed by Aid Group

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An international aid group said Saturday that medical centers it supported near the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack near Damascus received more than 3,000 patients showing symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic nerve agents on the morning of the reported attack.

Of those, 355 died, said the group, Doctors Without Borders.

The statement is the first issued by an international organization working in Syria about the attack on Wednesday in the suburbs northeast of Damascus, the capital. Antigovernment activists have said that hundreds of people were killed when government forces pelted the area with rockets spewing poisoned gas.

Also on Saturday, President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain expressed concern about “increasing signs” of “a significant chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime against its own people,” a British government statement said. The two leaders said that “significant use of chemical weapons would merit a serious response from the international community,” the statement added.

The Syrian government has denied that it used chemical weapons and on Saturday it said its soldiers had found chemical supplies in areas seized from rebel forces. Russia, an ally of the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, accused the rebels of using the weapons, but few analysts believe they have the supplies or ability to do so.

Determining the nature of the attack on Wednesday could affect the course of Western involvement in the war, and the United States, Russia and others have called for a United Nations team, sent to Syria to investigate past suspected chemical weapons use, to be given access to the site.

On Saturday, Angela Kane, the United Nations’ high representative for disarmament affairs, arrived in Damascus to urge the government to grant access to the team. She did not speak to reporters after her arrival.

Doctors Without Borders said it could not confirm what substances caused the symptoms it reported Saturday, or who was responsible for the attack, but its report appears to lend credibility to other accounts by witnesses and to the opposition’s estimates of the dead.

The aid group said the symptoms were reported by three medical facilities it supported in the area of the reported attack. The group’s statement said that in three hours on Wednesday morning, the three clinics received about 3,600 patients who had symptoms indicating exposure to a chemical nerve agent, including breathing problems, dilated pupils, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and blurred vision. Many of the medics in the three centers also experienced some symptoms, said Stephen Cornish, one of the group’s executive directors. One of the medics died.

“When you put these elements together, what it suggests to us is a neurotoxic agent,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday that it had confirmed the deaths of 322 people in the attack, including 54 children, 82 women, 16 people who could not be identified and dozens of rebel fighters. The Britain-based group said its activists had visited the area, spoken to residents and collected medical reports and videos that indicated that most of the dead were killed by exposure to toxic gas.

Last year, Mr. Obama called the use of chemical arms in Syria a red line that could prompt a harsh American response, but recent statements by American officials saying that they believed that Mr. Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons “on a small scale” multiple times in the past year have not led to a significant public change in American involvement in the war.

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A man holds the body of a dead child after what activists claim was a chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus on Wednesday.CreditReuters

Mr. Obama has supported an investigation into Wednesday’s attack, but has expressed hesitance about getting the United States involved militarily. After Mr. Obama met with his national security staff on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement, slightly less assertive than the British one, saying that American intelligence agencies were still trying to “gather facts to ascertain what occurred.”

The White House said Mr. Obama “received a detailed review of a range of potential options” at the meeting, but the statement did not specify what the options were.

Stepping up the pace of consultations, Secretary of State John Kerry made a series of calls on Saturday to his counterparts in Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Kerry also called Nabil Elaraby, the secretary general of the Arab League.

In those calls, Mr. Kerry underscored the “gravity of any chemical weapons use” and stressed the importance of quickly determining the facts, a senior State Department official said.

The State Department also disclosed that Mr. Kerry had made a stern call on Thursday to Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, in which he complained about the Assad government’s failure to allow United Nations inspectors to quickly visit the site of the suspected chemical weapons attack.

Mr. Kerry told Mr. Moallem that if the Assad government had, as it maintained, nothing to hide “it should have allowed immediate and unimpeded access to the site rather than continuing to attack the affected area to block access and destroy evidence,” the senior State Department official said.

Mr. Kerry also told Mr. Moallem that Syria rebel commanders had assured the United States that they would ensure the safety of any United Nations investigators that were allowed by the Assad government to go to the area.

The State Department did not say how Mr. Moallem had responded.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have supported the Syrian opposition against the Assad government. The American military has deployed air-defense missile batteries in Jordan along with F-16’s. Several hundred American military planners, including communications experts and logisticians, are also based there.

Pentagon officials said Saturday that Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would leave for Jordan this weekend to attend a long-scheduled meeting of regional military chiefs at which the situation in Syria was certain to be discussed. Pentagon officials also said that the Navy had increased its presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea to four destroyers, each carrying long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles similar to those launched in past American attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The Navy historically has deployed two destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, but had quietly added one more over recent months. The Navy’s commander in the region added a fourth, at least temporarily, by delaying a scheduled return to port for one warship and accelerating the arrival of its replacement.

While the Syrian government has not publicly responded to the demands to let inspectors visit the site, on Saturday it stepped up its efforts to blame rebels for the attack, first announcing on state-run television that its soldiers had found a tunnel filled with chemical compounds near the attack site and that some of the soldiers were choking and had to be evacuated.

Also, in an interview with Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, dismissed the possibility of an American attack, warning that such a move would risk triggering more violence in the region, reported The Associated Press. “The basic repercussion would be a ball of fire that would burn not only Syria but the whole Middle East,” Mr. Zoubi said. “An attack on Syria would be no easy trip.”

Correction:Aug. 25, 2013

An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the secretary general of the Arab League. It is Nabil Elaraby, not Nabil al-Arab.